The Self-Portrait of a Literary Biographer - Hardcover
A biography of literary biographer Katherine Anne Porter. Givner uses an experimental form of numbered vignettes that play the many contrasts of Porter's life against each other to create a richly textured portrait. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.
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About the Author:
Joan Givner is a professor of English at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan.
From Kirkus Reviews:
Autobiography, like surgery, isn't for the fainthearted. Here, noted biographer Givner (English/University of Regina, Saskatchewan; Katherine Anne Porter, 1982, etc.) coolly dissects her own family, career, and--occasionally--herself. Declaring that ``the writing of an autobiography induces a last-will-and-testament frame of mind,'' Givner proceeds to tell her life story in numbered paragraphs that are as much vignettes as reflections. She recalls her English childhood in a lower-middle- class home where books were rare--the family didn't even own a dictionary--and where gardening and listening to the radio were major diversions. Home for Givner was a place where ``every act- -even the simplest one of eating a meal, choosing a helping of this over that--was subjected to criticism, moral disapproval.'' Her parents were ill-matched, she thinks, with her mother's lack of imagination particularly exasperating. Only the author's success at school proved an escape from a crippling relationship with her parents--particularly her success at college, where she met and married a rich American. Givner elliptically describes the later breakdown of the marriage; her continuing academic success in the US; her move to Canada, where she remarried and gave birth to two daughters; and her teaching career in Saskatchewan. Equally elliptically, she details how her dissertation on Katherine Anne Porter became a book and how she came to write the biography of popular Canadian novelist Mazo de la Roche. Now in her late 50s, Givner ends with an observation that abruptly and disconcertingly undercuts the vehemence of her earlier discontents: ``To go out of your native land and to leave your people is to sustain a great incurable wound.'' Well written, and certainly tart and opinionated, but too narrow and small-scale, offering no riveting insights into writing or even just living. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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- PublisherUniv of Georgia Pr
- Publication date1993
- ISBN 10 0820315524
- ISBN 13 9780820315522
- BindingHardcover
- Edition number1
- Number of pages192
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The Self-Portrait of a Literary Biographer
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(1993)
ISBN 10: 0820315524
ISBN 13: 9780820315522
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Good. No Jacket. Pages can have notes/highlighting. Spine may show signs of wear. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less 1.05. Seller Inventory # G0820315524I3N00
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The Self-portrait of a Literary Biographer
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. Tough-minded, witty, and refreshingly candid, this book represents a biographer's journey into autobiography. Joan Givner, best known for her controversial study Katherine Anne Porter: A Life, has written an unconventional but thoroughly compelling memoir in which the rational is played against the intuitive, the public against the private, the present against the past. Givner rejects a conventional chronological narrative in favor of a series of numbered vignettes linked by a kind of free association. Reading the book is akin to turning a kaleidoscope: with each reconfiguring of elements, one's perception alters ever so slightly but ever so significantly. Givner reveals herself as child and adult, mother and daughter, biographer and subject, critic and fiction writer. There is stark power in the recollections of her working-class childhood in Manchester, England, and her return to England on the occasion of her father's death. There is poignancy and pain in the depictions of her relationship with her mother. And there is wry, self-deprecating humor in her evocations of life in the academy and the world of letters. Among the most fascinating glimpses the book offers are those of Givner's experiences investigating the life of Katherine Anne Porter. Givner recalls Porter's invitation to become her biographer and literary executor and recounts visits to the writer's Maryland home and, later, to her hospital bedside. Depicted as well are Givner's meetings with Porter's friends and acquaintances - a research quest that led to one particularly fateful encounter with Eudora Welty. Moving across geographical boundaries - England, the United States, Canada - as fluidly as it moves between pastand present, The Self-Portrait of a Literary Biographer explores the overlapping strands of Givner's life without ever losing its narrative drive. A work of rare honesty and perception, it may well encourage readers to make their own journeys of self-examination. Former library book. Ex-Libris and is stamped as such. Mylar protector included. Please note the image in this listing is a stock photo and may not match the covers of the actual item. Ex-Library. Seller Inventory # 123712323
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The Self-Portrait of a Literary Biographer
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(1993)
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ISBN 13: 9780820315522
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The Self-Portrait of a Literary Biographer
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Book Description hardcover, Condition: Very Good, University of Georgias Press, c.1993, 1st., 8vo., cloth, 195pp., NF/NF $. Seller Inventory # 70438
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The Self-Portrait of a Literary Biographer
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(1993)
ISBN 10: 0820315524
ISBN 13: 9780820315522
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Book Description hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. First Edition. Seller Inventory # FORT373016
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The Self-Portrait of a Literary Biographer (signed)
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The University of Georgia press of Georgia Pr, Georgia, U.S.A.
(1993)
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ISBN 13: 9780820315522
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Book Description Hard Cover. Condition: Very Good Plus. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. First Edition. First printing. Signed, dated (Christmas 1994) and inscribed by author on title page: "For _______ with best wishes from". Lightly rubbed on ends of spine and on corners, slightly cocked, previous owner's ink stamp on ffep, else very good plus. Pages spotless. DJ lightly wrinkled on ends of spine and ends of flap folds, else near fine. Size: 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. Signed by Author. Seller Inventory # 005447
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The Self-Portrait of a Literary Biographer (Signed)
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University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia
(1993)
ISBN 10: 0820315524
ISBN 13: 9780820315522
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Book Description Hard Cover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine Plus. First Edition. Inscribed by author on title page to fellow Canadian writer Kate Braid "To Kate / With admiration from Joan Givner / 23rd Oct 1999". Signed by Author. Seller Inventory # 10767
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